


Two For the Price of One

by Balder12



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drug Addiction, Episode: s09e01 I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here, False Identity, M/M, Oral Sex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Samzekiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 13:08:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balder12/pseuds/Balder12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 9.01.  Sam has been acting strangely since he returned to the bunker.  Kevin investigates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two For the Price of One

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a [prompt ](http://counteragent.livejournal.com/210836.html?thread=2514580#t2514580)by [scarletscarlet ](http://scarletscarlet.livejournal.com/)at the [S9 Fanwork Meme](http://counteragent.livejournal.com/210836.html).

The day after Sam returns to the bunker, the world still very much unsaved, Kevin goes into to town with the Winchesters for groceries.  It’s been months since he was in a crowded place, and he spends the entire time with his shoulders hunched and his head down, his heart beating so hard his pulse makes his hands shake.  There’s too much noise and too many voices.  The piped in music wears on his nerves and makes it impossible to hear whether there are footsteps behind him.  He knows the people in the cereal aisle probably aren’t demons, but any one of them _could_ be and he’d never realize it until they were flying at his throat.

Dean keeps up an idle stream of chatter about pie and soap operas and the kind of terrible eighties rock that people’s dads listen to.  Kevin can’t follow any of it.  It’s just one more distraction from danger, delivered in Dean’s bullshit, pseudo-macho Batman voice. 

Finally Kevin snaps.  “Shut up!  Shut up! No one fucking cares what you think about Bon Jovi!” 

Dean looks like he’s about to tell Kevin off, but then his eyes land on Sam.  Sam’s trailing a few steps behind the cart, staring at his hands and occasionally flexing his fingers like he’s not certain how they work.  Kevin had been too busy staying alive to notice until now, but it’s weird.  Dean deflates and Kevin briefly savors the relative quiet that follows.

Kevin’s respite doesn’t last long.  Somewhere around the cottage cheese he loses track of Sam and silently panics.  He doesn’t want the three of them splitting up.  What if they get attacked and have to run for the car?  He hates to peel away from Dean and face the grocery store alone, but he needs Sam back where he can see him.  Kevin elbows his way through the gauntlet of limbs, eyes on the fake green tile, hand on the hilt of a knife he knows damn well won’t work on demons, until he sees Sam’s boots in the produce section.  Kevin lifts his gaze cautiously and finds Sam watching the mister as it sprays the heads of lettuce.

“Sam . . .” Kevin isn’t sure how to explain that he needs Sam to go back to the cart and stick close to Dean so they don’t all die, please.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Sam says. 

Kevin is so confused he briefly forgets his fear of death.  “The . . . _lettuce_?” 

“Human ingenuity.”

 Kevin studies Sam’s beatific expression and thinks he’s figured it out.  “Dean gave you some awesome drugs after the trials, huh?”    

The drugs Dean gives Kevin are less awesome, although they’ve become essential.  Green pills are an electric shock to the system, hot bright awareness, a pounding heart, and unbreakable concentration.  Blue pills are a wool blanket that muffles pain and swallows him up in the dark folds of sleep.  Kevin alternates them reverently, a gift more precious than food or water.  If Dean has pills that make lettuce beautiful he needs to quit holding out on Kevin.

“I’m not on medication,” Sam says without looking away from the droplets of water accumulating on the green leaves.  It doesn’t sound like a lie.  That makes Sam’s behavior way creepier, but this isn’t the time or place to deal with that.  Kevin grabs the sleeve of Sam’s flannel shirt and tugs him back toward Dean.  Luckily Sam follows unquestioningly as Kevin cautiously leads him past all the people who probably aren’t demons.

Sam frees himself from Kevin’s grip when Dean comes into view.  “Thank you, Kevin,” he says sincerely.  Kevin’s not sure exactly what Sam’s thanking him for, but he has the sense Sam knows his quest to the produce section required more courage than it should have. 

Kevin spends the rest of their harrowing shopping trip watching over Sam like he’s a toddler playing on the edge of a cliff.  By the time Kevin’s securely in the backseat of the Impala again he feels like he’s spent days running from monsters and has a tremor in his hands that he can’t will away.  When he gets back to the bunker he takes blue pills until the shaking stops and then sleeps for the better part of a day.

When he wakes up the first thing he does, after stabilizing himself with a couple of cups of coffee and an acceptable number of green pills, is to ask Dean what the hell is wrong with Sam.  “Look, I know the two of you don’t believe in any medical treatment that doesn’t involve black magic and baby’s blood, but he almost died.  Maybe you should take him to a hospital.  Stick his head in an MRI machine and figure out what the fuck, you know?”

“He’s fine,” Dean says in an authoritative tone that only makes Kevin more suspicious.  Kevin doesn’t trust Dean—especially not after spending six weeks with overly-friendly demon versions of the Winchesters because Dean didn’t put angel sigils on the houseboat.  Dean says it was an honest mistake, but Kevin’s not so sure.  Even if it was innocent, it shows Dean is sloppy and unreliable.  The only person who’s going to keep Kevin safe is Kevin.

But after that first day Sam does seem fine.  Or at least he doesn’t engage in any more lettuce worship.  And Kevin doesn’t entirely trust his own sense of reality.  As far as he knows he hasn’t had a hallucination in a couple of months, but he recognizes it’s fucked up to think that the people in the grocery store are demons or to wake up in a cold sweat, terrified that Crowley has replaced the Winchesters with dopplegangers in the night.  It’s totally plausible that the person who’s off is Kevin.

Still, Kevin’s scrutiny discovers just enough moments of strangeness to keep him from forgetting what he saw at the grocery store.  He’s broken himself of the habit of sleep— without the help of a fistful of pills he can’t stay out for more than a couple of hours at a time, no matter how hard he tries—and in the small hours of the morning he often comes across Sam in the library, flipping idly through manuscripts.  When Kevin talks to him Sam is awkward and evasive, as if he’s embarrassed to be caught reading a book in his own home. 

Kevin secretly subjects Sam to every test he can think of.  He slips holy water into Sam’s beer and hides salt lines under the carpets without effect.  The bunker’s silverware is real silver and Sam eats with it happily, so he can’t be a shifter.  And as the weeks wear on it seems less and less likely that Sam is anything other than what he seems.  Surely the purpose of stealing Sam’s identity would be to get inside the bunker?  Once that was achieved whatever it was would pop out and murder Dean and Kevin, not hang around with them indefinitely, contentedly making salads and failing to keep a two dollar basil plant alive in the kitchen (Kevin could have told him that little project was doomed:  _we live in a steel coffin, genius, there’s no sunlight_ ). Kevin can’t see an endgame.

He watches Sam anyway.  He studies the set of Sam’s shoulders and analyzes the nuances of every sentence.  He considers Sam’s long fingers wrapped around his coffee mug and his dark hair wet with sweat after he’s been for a run.  He catalogues the times Sam smiles at him and the times he doesn’t, his occasional interest and his constant indifference.  Sam is a mystery, and as long as Kevin’s trying to solve it the stretch of blank days before him, identical and empty, have a purpose.

************************************

Kevin doesn’t leave the bunker after the initial shopping trip.  He finds reasons to snarl at the Winchesters when they offer to take him with them on supply runs.  They keep offering, week in and week out, in exactly the same casual tone of voice.  If it were someone else he might suspect it was pity, but it’s the Winchesters, so he’s pretty sure they really are that oblivious to what’s going on in his head. 

He’s grateful they leave him alone because fuck them, but he also secretly wishes one of them—in his head it’s always Sam—would ask him why he won’t go outside.  He wishes Sam would keep pushing when Kevin tells him to fuck off until the truth spills out on the floor all ugly and shameful.  And then maybe they’d go someplace less scary than a grocery store, someplace with wind and sun and sky, and Kevin could start learning to live in the world again.  It never happens.

Dean pretty much only sticks his head into the study to ask how the translation is going or to quietly drop off the requested supply of pills.  Sam comes by more often, bearing sandwiches Kevin doesn’t eat and water bottles he doesn’t drink.  Sometimes Kevin smells the cold fall air caught in the folds of Sam’s shirt or the wholesome earthy scent of fallen leaves.  The weather is changing.  A couple of times Sam tries to have a Serious Talk with Kevin, like he’s a high school teacher having a heart-to-heart with a troubled student. There’s something rather sweet about the earnest awkwardness of these conversations, but they also piss Kevin off.  Sam has so much advice about how Kevin _should_ feel that Kevin barely gets a word in edgewise.  

Maybe the main thing that pisses Kevin off about the Serious Talks is that they never include any mention that Kevin sucked Sam's cock on the houseboat.  It’s like it never happened, like it doesn’t matter at all.  It’s not like Kevin went into it thinking they were in love or that there’d be some grand affair.  It was after the first trial, when Sam was starting to look shaky and translucent from sickness.  Kevin had been strung out on green pills, even hornier than two years of isolation made him naturally.  He was eighteen and didn’t want to die a virgin, and there was a handsome man standing in front of him who was coughing up blood like the heroine of a Victorian romance novel, all pale and heroically self-destructive.  Kevin had never thought about a guy that way before, but it was definitely his idea.  He’d pushed Sam down on the dirty, unmade bed and taken his cock in his mouth.  The warm salty weight of it on his tongue is what he remembers when he jerks off, the struggle to cover his teeth his lips, the low moan from Sam’s throat and the hot flush of power.  The thirty seconds he was in Sam’s mouth before he came feels insignificant in comparison.  

Kevin can’t shake the feeling he’s been wronged.  He was supposed to be far away by now, living the life he’ll never have because Sam chickened out.  Kevin handed over his virginity with no strings attached, but he still feels like it was taken under false pretenses.  He’s not even sure what he wants Sam to do to make it right.  Apologize?  Ask for a second date?  Any hint that Sam thinks about it at all would be nice.

 Whatever else Sam owes him, there’s one thing Kevin knows for sure:  the Winchesters owe him money.  They’ve never paid him a dime for the thousands of hours—now worthless—he spent translating the demon tablet, even after he gave himself a stroke doing their fruitless work.  They’re not paying him for the angel tablet either, although they clearly expect him to get it done promptly. They seem to think room and board is good enough, but Kevin hates being dependent and he has no way of achieving his freedom from them without money of his own.  He squirrels away pills in the secret hiding places he finds around the bunker, but it’s based on no more than a hazy notion that drugs have a street value.  He has no idea how he’d ever actually sell them, and he figures he’s probably the only addict in history who’s wanted to trade his drugs for rent money.  He rifles through the Winchesters’ jackets when they leave them hanging on the back of the kitchen chair and turns out the pockets of their jeans when he does laundry.  After a couple of months he’s collected a small stash of pills and about $200, mostly in ones and fives.  He’s not sure what he’s going to do with it—the world above is full of enemies, and he won’t survive in it long if he can’t go into a store without having a panic attack—but as long as he keeps collecting he can believe he still has a future beyond this box.    

Kevin never finds anything of note in the Winchesters’ pockets:  condoms and candy in Dean’s, sugarless gum and receipts in Sam’s. Neither of them ever mention the missing cash.  They stole it from other people before Kevin stole it from them, so maybe they don’t value it enough to keep track of small change.  Maybe they accuse each other when he’s not around.  Maybe they know it’s him and don’t feel like having a confrontation.  Kevin’s fine with all those options. 

His thievery is limited to the common rooms.  Partly he avoids their bedrooms out of respect—he keeps a hair stuck across the door of his own bedroom and it hasn’t been disturbed.  He’s not inclined to violate their privacy as long as they don’t violate his.  Partly he’s afraid their bedrooms are booby trapped.  Going into to them seems like more danger than it’s worth.   

****************************************

Kevin’s halfway through his special bottle of Jack Daniels—two-thirds whiskey, one-third holy water—when he finds Sam’s door ajar.  Sam’s clothes are piled up on his desk as if he’s just changed out of them.  It’s a line Kevin hasn’t crossed before, but the door is almost never open and there could be money, drugs, or information sitting there just out of reach.  He can’t resist.  He tiptoes in, half expecting to be cut in two by a sword that never falls.  He feels through Sam’s pockets hastily and discovers nothing of interest except a folded ten dollar bill.  Sam’s wallet is sitting on the nightstand at the far side of the unmade bed and Kevin briefly considers going for it, but walking the five extra feet into the room feels inexplicably worse than what he’s already done, so he lets it lie.   

He’s about to take the money and leave when he notices the white edge of a piece of paper peeking out from inside it.  Kevin unfolds the bill and finds a handwritten note.  It’s a grid listing the days of the week:  “Monday: 10am-2pm; Tuesday:  12-1am; Wednesday:  4-5pm; Thursday:  2-4am; Friday:  All Accounted For.”  _All accounted for._   What does that mean?  Kevin tries to associate the intervals Sam listed with the times Kevin’s observed weird behavior.  He hasn’t been as thorough as Sam’s been about charting it out, though, so he can’t say conclusively whether they align.         

“The fuck are you doing in my bedroom at three in the morning?”

Sam’s bare feet stop squarely in front of Kevin’s eyes on the hardwood floor.  Kevin lifts his gaze reluctantly.  Sam’s wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants and a look of righteous indignation.

“I was just . . .” Kevin has no good way to end that sentence.

“Going through my pockets?” Sam’s pissed, but there’s a tiny twist of smile at the corner of his mouth. Before Kevin can think of anything to say Sam shuts the door behind him.

Kevin feels tiny in Sam’s shadow.  Sam is legitimately intimidating, but there’s also a thrill to being the focus of his attention, whatever the cause.

“Find anything interesting?”  Sam says.

There’s no point lying about it.  Sam knows what’s in his own pockets.  “Just this.”  Kevin holds out the grid and the money.  Sam takes both back and tosses them down on the desk.

“You read the note, I guess?” Sam sounds resigned.  “You know what it means?”

Kevin shakes his head, but then says, “Something’s wrong with you, isn’t it?  You never really got better after the trials.”

Sam sinks down on the bed and scrubs his hand over his face.  “No, I did, I just . . . look, Kev, if I tell you something, can I trust you to keep it between us?”

“Yeah, of course.”  Kevin tries to make himself feel like an adult who’s in the middle of a serious situation, but mostly he just feels the same stupid, giddy flush of pride he did on the last Thanksgiving before everything went to hell, when his family finally let him sit at the grownups’ table and drink wine.

Sam sighs. “I’ve, uh, been having blackouts.  Short term memory loss.  I’ve done all the tests . . . “

“Salt, silver, holy water,” Kevin interrupts.  “Me too.  It’s not supernatural.”

Sam glances up at Kevin. “Of course you did.”  He looks mildly impressed.  “And you’re right, it’s not supernatural. So I went to see a doctor, and he thinks maybe I’ve got Multiple Impact Syndrome.  It’s this kind of brain damage that mostly happens to boxers and football players, but I’ve had dozens of concussions and it would explain why I’m losing time.”

“That’s fucked up,” Kevin says, because it is and he doesn’t know what else to say about it.

“I should be okay.  As long as I stop getting hit in the head.”  Sam snorts.  “We’ll see how well that works out.  But for now I haven’t figured out how I’m going to break the news to Dean, all right?”

Kevin nods.  He wouldn’t have told Dean anyway.  He’s learned information is valuable.  He doesn’t share it when he doesn’t have to.

“Hey, what made you think something was wrong with me?” Sam asks after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“The day after you came back to the bunker we all went to the grocery store and you were acting weird. You were super in love with the lettuce.  I kind of figured you were high.” 

Sam huffs out a laugh. “I remember going to the store.  I don’t remember anything about lettuce.” 

“And I’ve run into you in the library late at night a few times when it kind of seemed like you were off in your own little world.  It’s hard to explain.”

Sam rests his head in his hand.  “Okay. That fits, I guess.” He looks up at Kevin.  “The doctor said one of the symptoms can be violent rage.  If you see me acting weird –“

“You’ve never been violent or angry or anything,” Kevin says.  “Mostly you just seem stoned.”

Sam smiles ruefully.  “That’s good. But you should still be careful.  If I don’t seem like myself just stay away from me.  And tell me later, okay?”  

“Sure,” Kevin says.  And he’s sorry this is happening to Sam, he really is, but he likes being complicit in Sam’s secret.  He’s involved in someone else’s life again.  Like he’s a real person.

Kevin lays his hand reassuringly on Sam’s shoulder.  Sam had kept his shirt on when they had sex; Kevin’s never touched Sam’s bare back before.  Sam shifts and the muscles slide under Kevin’s fingers, but Sam doesn’t pull away.  His skin is soft, and Kevin imagines laying his cheek against it.  The thought makes his breath come faster, his heart rattling in his chest with a feeling that’s half terror and half joy, like sitting poised before the first drop on a roller coaster.

“Your blackouts include that time on the houseboat?” Kevin says.  He mostly means it as a joke, but as soon as it passes his lips he hears how ugly it is.  He doesn’t remember how to talk without the words getting tangled up in his bitterness. 

Sam shrugs off Kevin’s hand and looks up at him. “No.” He studies Kevin’s face.  Kevin wants to say something, but his tongue is fat and stupid in his mouth.  “I’m sorry.  That whole thing was my fault.  I should never have let you . . .”

Kevin cuts him off.  “You didn’t _let_ me do anything.”  He’s been waiting for an apology for months, but this isn’t the one he wanted.  “I don’t want it to be your fault.  Is it so awful it has to be somebody’s fault?  I mean, Jesus, I just want to hear you admit we had sex for once.”

Sam looks away, and then brings his gaze back reluctantly.  “We had sex,” he says with a flicker of a smile.  “And I fucked up—“ Kevin starts to interrupt but Sam cuts him off “—not the sex part, maybe, but definitely the afterward part.  Look, I’m not so great about dealing with feelings.  Or sex.  Or anything else, really, at this point in my life.  I should have just talked to you about it like a fucking human being, but I didn’t know how, and then a bunch of other stuff happened, and then it felt like it was too late.  I was an asshole.”

“Yeah, a little bit,” Kevin says, but he’s smiling.  He settles his hand on Sam’s back again.  The thing is, Kevin’s pretty sure Sam’s got it backward, the parts of himself Kevin likes and the parts Kevin hates.  It’s the Big Damn Hero, Obi Wan Kenobi routine that makes Kevin angry.  It’s all hypocrisy and bullshit, and probably not just from Sam, but from everyone who’s ever pulled it on someone else.  The guy who can’t figure out how to tell his brother he’s sick and is too scared to deal with a one night stand is just a guy, and Kevin feels a warm ache for him in his chest.

Kevin sits next to Sam on the bed and puts his right arm around Sam’s waist.  It’s more bare skin than Kevin’s touched in his life and his palm is sweaty against Sam’s ribcage.  He leans in and presses a kiss to the side of Sam’s neck and the line of his collarbone, mostly because those are the places in easy reach of his mouth. 

Sam shivers.  “Kevin . . .”.  It sounds like a protest, but he doesn’t pull away.

“Look, this can just be what it is, okay?  We can just be two people together.  You know?”  And Kevin thinks that’s the worst explanation imaginable of what he wants, of why he wants it with Sam right now.  Kevin’s body is property he no longer owns.  He’s spent the last two years as a thing, made to be cut, broken, used, and occasionally protected by strange men who think they know better than him what he needs.  He wants to feel like a person. And Sam can be a person too, and for a few minutes everything will be a little better for them both.    When Sam nods Kevin isn’t sure if it’s because he somehow magically understands what Kevin is asking for or if it’s just because he wants to get laid.  Kevin will take it either way.

Kevin presses on Sam’s shoulder and Sam sinks back against the unmade bed.  Kevin’s shaking and dry-mouthed.  This is different than the last time, when urgency made it easy and there was no lingering touch.  His hand rests squarely in the center of Sam’s chest and he feels Sam’s heart beating.  He’s so nervous he’s barely turned on when he bends to kiss Sam’s nipple, but when it tightens under his tongue Sam gives a gasp that runs in soft chills down Kevin’s spine.  Sam’s hand slides up under Kevin’s shirt and strokes his back.  Kevin slides down his body, kissing his stomach and licking into his navel.  Sam squirms and Kevin looks up to find him biting his lip, trying not to laugh.  “Ticklish?” Kevin says.  Sam shrugs, embarrassed.  Kevin feels a hot stab of affection so sharp it’s like pain.

Kevin hooks his fingers into Sam’s sweatpants and pulls.  He’s afraid this is where Sam’s going to change his mind, but Sam just lifts his hips.  Sam’s cock is the only one Kevin’s ever seen in person that’s not his own.  The first time he’d half-worried and half-hoped that it would turn out to be some kind of ridiculously oversized cock of terror, but it’s perfectly ordinary.  The weight of it feels vulnerable and familiar in Kevin’s hand.  He kisses the inner fold of Sam’s thigh, sucking a bruise in the tender skin, and Sam’s knee shifts as his toes flex against the sheets. 

He takes Sam in his mouth slowly, careful this time not to scrape with his teeth.  He sucks gently, his fist wrapped around the bottom half he can’t take in.  Sam tastes bitter and smells raw, the animal scent of arousal heavy and still new, but the confusion of sensations crystallizes into a hard knot of want in the pit of Kevin’s stomach.  Sam’s breath is ragged and heavy like he’s climbing.  The hand resting on Kevin’s jaw slides into his hair and clutches.  This is better than being touched.  This is power.

Sam’s body is a long bowstring, wet with sweat, when he starts to murmur, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”  Kevin pulls off and rests his head on Sam’s hip, giving him the last half dozen strokes he needs.  Sam comes with a quiet choked off groan.  Kevin wipes his hand on the sheets and hugs Sam’s thigh. 

Sam hauls him up and fumbles with the button of his jeans, but Sam’s hands are shaky and he curses under his breath.  Kevin laughs and does it himself.  Sam pushes one huge hand between Kevin’s waistband and his stomach, and cradles Kevin’s face with the other, kissing him sweetly.  Kevin arches up against Sam’s hand and opens to his mouth.  It doesn’t take Sam long to finish him off.  Afterward Kevin slumps back against the mattress exhausted.

He shuts his eyes and enjoys the weight of Sam’s body against his side, the slow caress of Sam’s foot against his own.  He’s already half-asleep when he feels Sam shift, and he suspects he’s about to hear an awkward request to leave.  His heart curls in on itself, showing its spines like a porcupine.  Sam just tugs at his jeans, though.  With Kevin’s help he finally gets them off and tosses them on the floor. 

“Comfortable?” Sam says against Kevin’s ear, and slides one hand up under his shirt to rest on his chest. Kevin hooks his foot around Sam’s ankle and nods before he falls asleep.

Kevin wakes up a couple of hours later, still bone-tired but alert in a way that tells him he won’t be able to sleep again tonight.  Behind him, Sam is still dead to the world.  Kevin lifts Sam’s hand off his chest, delicately detaching himself without waking Sam up. 

His feet hit the ground and he feels around on the floor for his jeans.  He has no intention except to slip out, but his eyes land on the wallet sitting on the nightstand next to him.  Kevin doesn’t doubt Sam’s story about brain damage, and it’s not like he thinks there’ll be a calling card from Mr. Hyde, but what harm does it do to look?  Sam will never know.

Kevin sits on the floor, his back against the bed, and flips open the wallet, squinting at its contents in the dim light.  There’s a driver’s license in the name of Sam Wesson, and a couple of other fake IDs hidden behind it.  A half dozen credit cards in as many different names.  Nothing Kevin didn’t expect to find. 

There are a couple of photographs.  Both are of pretty, curly-haired white women, one blonde and one brunette.  It takes Kevin a long moment to recognize that the man standing with the blonde is Sam.  He can’t be much older than Kevin.  Kevin’s not sure if it’s sweet or creepy that Sam still has a picture of an ex-girlfriend from a decade ago.  The Sam standing with the brunette looks the same as the one Kevin knows.  There’s a dog at their feet.  The woman must be Amelia.  The one Sam left Kevin for dead to be with.  She looks nice. 

There’s cash in the billfold.  It’s a hundred in twenties.  Kevin can’t remember the last time he saw so much money in one place.  He wants it with a physical yearning that feels almost like lust.  His fingers hover over it.  This is stupid.  There’s no way Sam won’t know he took it.  And then his gut twists with spite:  good, let Sam know.  Let him confront Kevin.  If he wants his money back at least he’ll have to admit this happened. 

He’s clutching the cash in his hand when he hears Sam move above him and freezes.  Rationally he knows Sam would never hurt him; the worst case scenario if he’s caught is a painfully awkward five minutes.  But his body is convinced he’s about to be murdered.  He gets hit with so much adrenaline that his heart palpitates and the back of his throat tastes like metal.  You’d think living surrounded by monsters would make you braver, but it’s made Kevin a goddamn coward.                  

Sam peers over the edge of the bed.  “Kevin?”  It’s soft and curious.  Kevin feels righteous and defensive, ready to fight.  But somehow the complete lack of accusation in Sam’s voice cuts the legs out from under him, and he sees himself the way he’d look to someone else.  The way he must look to Sam.  An unwashed, paranoid, half-naked junkie who sucked a guy’s cock and then stole from him while he was asleep.  It’s suddenly, painfully clear why he’ll never be in one of Sam’s wallet photographs.

His eyes burn and his throat hurts.  “I’ll go,” he says quietly.  “I should go.” 

Sam looks confused for a moment too long, and Kevin senses maybe this is the Sam who wanders around the library at night.  Finally Sam sees the wallet in Kevin’s hand and seems to understand what’s happened.

“It’s all right,” Sam says.  “Come back to bed.”

Kevin wavers.  He wants the forgiveness, but he’s not entirely sure he trusts it.  What if Sam was possessed while Kevin was asleep?  Or switched out entirely?  Crowley is chained up right under their feet.  Anything is possible.  And at the same time another, saner part of him says Sam is just Sam, and Kevin shouldn’t screw this up any worse than he already has.  He glances around for his bottle of Jack Daniels and finds it on the floor near the nightstand.  He takes a swig and lets the moisture linger on his lips when he crawls into the bed.  When Sam curls around his back Kevin grabs Sam’s hand and kisses the inside of his wrist.  The Jack Daniels is one-third holy water, but Sam’s skin doesn’t sizzle or smoke.  There’s nobody else in there. 

Kevin relaxes.  He slips the money back into the billfold and sets the wallet on the nightstand just as he found it, feeling a little guilty and immensely relieved.  Sam’s hand comes to rest on Kevin’s temple, and sleep overtakes Kevin unexpectedly fast.  With any luck, in the morning Sam won’t remember a thing. 


End file.
